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Canadian Air Force fighter jets poised to launch missions near Russian airspace

Six CF-18 Hornets from 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron take off from Bagotville, Que., on April 29, 2014 to fly to Romania as part of Canada's contribution to NATO's reassurance measures in order to promote security and stability in Eastern and Central Europe. Photo: Corporal Jean-Roch Chabot, 3 Wing, Bagotville

Canadian fighter jets are to begin flying NATO “air policing” missions near Russian airspace for the first time later this summer, the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force said in an interview.

“I expect our CF-18s are going to be moving into Lithuania sometime at the end of August to prepare for the air policing tasking from September,” Lt.-Gen Yvan Blondin said Wednesday on the margins of RIMPAC 2014, the largest joint sea, air and land exercise in the Pacific.

“I expect we’ll be in Lithuania until at least December and then we will see what the government wants to do.”

A “six pack” of Canadian CF-18 Hornets from Alberta’s CFB Cold Lake is likely to be based at Siauliai in northern Lithuania. The are being sent there to defend the integrity of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian airspace from incursions by potentially hostile aircraft.

Siauliai is only 120 kilometres north of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, home to Russia’s Baltic fleet, and about 230 kilometres southwest of Latvia’s border with Russia.

There has been rampant speculation about Russian intentions in the Baltics following Moscow’s seizure and annexation of Crimea in March and threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to send his troops into eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces for several months. Since then Russian troops have taken part in huge impromptu exercises near the three Baltic statelets, which were once reluctant members of the Soviet Union.

However, Blondin said there was no direct link between the situation in Ukraine and the impending deployment of CF-18s in Lithuania.

“It is not something that was set up for the crisis in Ukraine,” Blondin said, explaining that NATO has conducted air policing operations for some time to assist its three small Baltic members, which do not have warplanes of their own.

Canada is to send fighter jets to fly “air policing” missions near Russian airspace for the first time. says Lt.-Gen. Yvan Blondin, commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

As NATO noted in a press release several months ago, the alliance has “increased its presence with additional jets (in the Baltics) after the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine.”

Over the past 10 years Lithuanian air space has been protected by only one NATO air force at a time. But since this spring warplanes from the U.S., Poland and Britain have been stationed there temporarily. The Canadian jets will likely replace Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons and Polish MiG-29 Fulcrums.

Fighter jets from Denmark and France are currently flying additional “air policing’ missions over the Baltics from bases in Estonia and Poland.

Blondin likened the missions that Canadian jets will be flying in the Baltics to what the Royal Canadian Air Force already does to protect Canada’s own airspace by intercepting potentially hostile aircraft.

“It is similar to what we do in NORAD,” the former fighter pilot said. “You’ve got airplanes on alert and if you’ve got airplanes coming in too close to national boundaries, we launch CF-18s in Canada….

“It is what we did in Iceland a year and a half ago,” when Canada sent six CF-18s to Keflavik for five weeks, he said. “It was NATO air policing in a country that doesn’t have an air force.”

As Canada’s air policing mission begins in Lithuania, a separate NATO training mission involving six CF-18s from CFB Bagotville in Quebec will end in northern Romania, Blondin said. That deployment, which began in May, was designed, “as part of the NATO efforts to reassure allies in Central and Eastern Europe,” after what happened in Ukraine, the alliance said in a statement at the time.

It is possible that some of the CF-18s now in Romania would be shifted to Lithuania, while others due for maintenance would be returned to Canada with “fresh” aircraft sent to the Baltics, Blondin said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been perhaps the most vocal leader of any NATO member state in condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The prime minister has visited Ukraine twice this spring to express his government’s solidarity with the new regime there. It took office after a bloody coup on the streets of Kyiv in late February ousted Viktor Yanukovych, who had close ties to Russia.

Matthew Fisher is Postmedia's international affairs columnist and Canada's longest serving foreign correspondent. He has lived and worked abroad for 31 years in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and... read more, more recently, Afghanistan. His assignments have taken him to 162 countries, all U.S. states, Canadian provinces and territories, above the North Pole and to an iceberg over the Magnetic North Pole. During his travels he has been an eyewitness to 19 wars and conflicts. The personal highlight of his career as a roaming correspondent was when he attended Nelson Mandela's inauguration in Pretoria.View author's profile